For Now
by daughtersofthesun
Summary: She tiptoes over to the back door and presses both palms and an ear to it. She whispers his name. "Brandon."


**Author's note:** I binge watched "The Fosters" and just caught up with it last night. And I know there's gonna be a new episode Monday and it probably will not go a thing like this, but I don't know what to do with my life now that I don't have another episode to watch until four more days and anyways here's a little one-shot.

**Summary:** They said I love you. They broke up. They can't see each other anymore. So why does he find a note that she's left for him outside at school? "Empty house tonight." He leaves her one back: "I'll knock four times." Brallie. Oneshot.

**Setting:** Set right after 1.15 and going along with the 1.16 preview where it shows that Brandon has moved out and Stef and Lena have set Callie some ground rules.

**Disclaimer:** Yo I don't own "The Fosters" or there would be a lot more Brallie making out scenes then there actually are ja feel?

* * *

**For Now**

* * *

She says it nonchalantly, naïvely. "So... I'm gonna be at work, Lena has a parent/teacher conference after school today, Jesus has wrestling practice, Mariana is back working for the school play, and Jude's going over to Connor's house to do homework. You gonna be okay here by yourself for a couple hours?"

She nods at Stef. "Yeah, sure." It was her who'd suggested to Jude that he go over to Connor's for a change since Connor usually comes over to theirs, anyway. Not that Stef knew that. She's half surprised Moms are even allowing her to be alone in an empty house without parental supervision. Since she's still earning back their trust, and all. But she won't question their leniency twice.

"Alright, love. Good. It shouldn't be too long. And you know to call either Lena or I if you need anything."

She nods again. She won't need anything.

School goes by slowly. She sees him in the courtyard before first period and several other times throughout the day. It's always the same. A passing glance in the hallways between classes filled with want and longing but masked by indifference, a brushing of fingertips against palms producing shivers that give false credit to the breeze.

She has first lunch, and she leaves a note beneath one leg of her chair where she knows he will sit come second lunch, a means of communication they've come up with since Moms monitor their phones now and they can't be seen together by anyone that might nark, purposely or not. The message is specific enough to where he will know what she is trying to convey to him, but vague enough to where if found by anyone else, they'd be clueless.

_House empty after school._

And in between fifth and sixth periods she stops by her locker and finds a folded up piece of paper jammed into the door:

_I'll knock four times._

She arrives home at exactly 3:15. Sets her bag down. Fills herself up a glass of water. Waits. 3:20. 3:25. Bounces her leg up and down on the seat where she sits at the island anxiously. 3:35. The idea that maybe he couldn't get past his dad — Moms had asked him to move in with Mike ever since she'd come home — creeps into her thoughts, but she pushes it aside. This opportunity won't present itself again for a long while. He will come. He will find a way.

_"I will find a way."_

3:40. She empties her glass in the sink. Turns on some music on her phone. The song he'd written for her. He'd recorded it and slid a CD into her locker, and now she listens to it when she's anxious or worried or lonely and it helps to calm her down and remind her that even though he isn't there in the room across the hall anymore, he still loves her and he'd be here in that room if he could. 3:41. 3:42.

A knock at the back door. She stops in her tracks. Turns off the song. Another knock. A third one. But that's it. There's only three.

She smirks in spite of the drum cadence her heart is performing. He's teasing her. She tiptoes over to the back door and presses both palms and an ear to it. She whispers his name. "Brandon."

The fourth knock.

The door swings open and lips crash into lips. Arms wrapped so tightly around another that one might think their goal was to bruise. She makes a move to shrug off the opened button-up that he's wearing as a light jacket above a tee, but is stopped by his bookbag, which is still strapped around one shoulder. _That's why he took so long,_ she thinks. _He walked here. _He pulls away slightly and pushes the bag to the floor himself, leaving her lips burning and her skin cold, before pulling her back to him.

The two hobble towards the direction of the couch without breaking contact for a single second, all the desire built up inside them from the past couple of weeks finally releasing itself. Soon he's reached the arm of the couch and she tips him over it backwards and crawls in on top of him. His hands grip her hips; her fingers tangle themselves in his hair; his breath is hot on her skin; he kicks off his shoes.

"How much time do we have?" he murmurs against her neck between scattered breaths.

The vibrations of his lips on that spot beneath her earlobe send a shiver down her spine, and her voice is shaky when she answers. "You would know the answer to that better than I would."

"You're right." Against her shoulder this time, pulling the clothing aside momentarily to gain access to it with his mouth. "I'd say we've got about a good twenty minutes."

And that's when she pulls away with a sigh. His immediate reaction is a subtle pout due to the absence of her body pressed to his, and it almost makes her smile. But it's her next words that cannot be said with a happy expression. "I can't keep doing this, Brandon."

He sighs. Sits up. Runs a hand through his hair, now sticking up in weird places from where her fingers had previously been entwined in it. "I know."

She'd expected him to freak, to refuse, to deny. But that wasn't his way anymore. Not since the night of the funeral. When she'd said, in no less words, _"I love you, but I can't."_ And he'd said okay, no sign at all of the slightly immature and impulsive foster brother that she'd come to know and love. But that, obviously, hadn't been the case. Because neither one of them had been powerful enough to resist their feelings for the other, resulting in the sneaking around they've been doing.

"I just miss you. A lot. And, like, _all_ the time."

A hand on her face. "I miss you, too."

A sigh. She closes her eyes and leans into his touch. "There's gotta be an easier way."

"Well, until we turn eighteen, there's not much else we can do. We're just... outlaws."

Looks up at him. Smirks at the reference to their song. "Since when are you the one of reason out of the two of us?"

He smiles back. "Since you had the genius idea of meeting up in our empty house for, uh, _after school activities._"

She laughs at that one. "I don't know. I've been considering the ALP again. I'm not officially adopted yet, so. Not for a few more months, at least. And they've already promised to adopt Jude. He's even started calling them both 'Mom'." She laughs again. "He asked me the other day if they would get confused if he tried to call one of them from across the house. If he should call one Mom and the other Momma. And which one would be which." And then another sigh. "Besides. If they're his family, then they're my family, too. Isn't that what Lena always says? That DNA doesn't make a family? That love does? Well a couple of signatures at the bottom of a court document shouldn't make a family either. I should apply for assisted living."

Another sigh from him, too. A lot of sighs this afternoon. "I thought we decided you weren't gonna do that on account of me. You need a family."

"Yeah, but I also need my _boyfriend._" She shoves against him playfully, pushing him back into the couch, trying to lighten the mood. She knows he loves when she says that word. "Besides, they'd end up being my family, anyway, if we ever got—" she stops short, at once embarrassed of what she'd been about to say — how dare she even think such a thing would ever be possible in this life — and hoping he won't notice. "I mean, when they adopt Jude. His family is my family."

His grin is a bit too wide as he brushes a piece of hair behind her ear. "Well, I've been thinking, too," he says. "And what if I got, like... emancipated? That way we don't have to wait two years to, you know, do _this._" He pulls her down to him and nuzzles his face into her neck.

She scoffs beneath her laugh and pushes him off of her. "Yeah, right. Your moms would_ kill_ you."

"Hey, they're about to be _your_ moms, too."

"And isn't that the whole problem?"

His gaze hardens then. "I'm not gonna make you choose, Callie. And just like you did when you ran away... I'm gonna take myself out of the equation. And I'm gonna do it for _us_. So we can be together." He pauses, hesitant. "I've been saving up some money."

She scrunches up her nose at him. "How? You don't even have a job."

"I've just... been saving up my allowance," he lies. She knows he's lying. She can feel it. But she won't ask. Because as much as she hates the idea of him pretty much divorcing his parents, she can't lie and say that it wouldn't be a huge relief.

"If you get emancipated you'll have to get a job, you know. And an apartment. And you can't find one without the other."

Takes her face in his hands again. "I'm not saying it's gonna be easy. But I want to do it. Because I... Because I love you."

This is only the second time he's said it since the first time she did. And it makes her heart flutter. "I love you, too."

And then they're kissing again, but not heatedly and hastily like before. This time it's gentle and pure and she melts into him. And she's going to try to talk him out of getting emancipated. There's got to be another way. One they haven't thought of yet. But for now, they will just have to keep sneaking around. She feels his cold fingers slide beneath the hem of her shirt and up the small of her back and she sighs into his kiss, a good sigh this time. And, yes. For now, until the jingling of a pair of keys in the front door's lock signals him to jump up from beneath her and scuttle for the back door, most likely forgetting his bookbag on the floor and causing her to have to come up with some lame, last minute excuse that Moms will barely believe as to why it's there, almost getting them caught, like he'd forgotten it at school and she'd brought it home so that Stef could drop it off at Mike's — and then she thinks that that might actually not be a bad idea of a way to pass notes...

For now, this will be enough.


End file.
